Somewhere in the depths of space, a group of aliens with feline-patterned skin/80s glam rock stars with a cat-like theme flee their doomed homeworld of Thundera. Pursued by their enemies, the Mutants, their ship crash-lands on the planet of Third Earth.

The series chronicled the ThunderCats as they adapted to their new home, making allies and enemies with the natives, and battling the machinations of the series' Big Bad, a mummified sorcerer-lich named Mumm-Ra who usually cowed the Mutants into doing his bidding. The show's second season chronicled their return to Thundera and their attempts to re-stabilize it, with an expansion of the cast of other refugee Thunderans.

After the End: The Thundercats' original homeworld blows up during the Premiere. There are also hints that Third Earth is the future of our world, but what happened to the human race is not revealed. A few human-looking populations are shown (the warrior maidens, Professor Dometome and his associates). Also, there are some stray humans such as Hachiman, Mandora and Safari Joe.

Batman Can Breathe in Space: The Thundercats universe blatantly disregards many physical facts, but none are as jarring as the fact that apparently everyone can breathe and speak in outer space just fine, thank you.

Bat Signal: The Sword of Omens can do this when Lion-O invokes "Thundercats, HOOOOOOOOO!"

Beauty Equals Goodness: The episode "Good and Ugly" subverted it: the beautiful alien was the evil one, the ugly one good. From the good alien's perspective, Lion-O and Snarf were ugly.

Berserk Button: The Ancient Spirits of Evil do not take kindly to Mumm-Ra deciding that he doesn't need them anymore after he gains possession of the Golden Sphere of Seti. They're so angry, in fact, that they not only send the sphere far away, they refuse to transform Mumm-Ra into his Ever-Living form, and while they eventually agree to do so, once he reclaims it, they threaten to forever ban him from the Black Pyramid unless he surrenders it.

Card-Carrying Villain: Mumm-Ra, to the point that carrying an actual card would be redundant. This guy is so enthusiastically and devoutly evil that he practically screams his own wickedness from rooftops.

Cool Sword: The Sword of Omens not only provides Lion-O with "sight beyond sight"; it can seemingly do pretty much anything he commands it to, including (but not limited to) levitation, shooting energy blasts, and creating force fields.

Deal with the Devil: In "Monkian's Bargain", Monkian agrees to allow Mumm-Ra to make him powerful enough to defeat the Thundercats and rule Third Earth. He's so impatient that he leaves without hearing what the price is, and he's too Genre Blind to question why Mumm-Ra is giving him the power and not using it himself. After he manages to defeat the Thundercats, what happens to him is pretty scary, even if he does recover.

Mumm-Ra: You rule Third Earth. But it is a kingdom you will never see! Because you can never leave my pyramid!

Death World: Visit beautiful Third Earth, home to locales such as the Field of Daggers, the Crumbling Cliffs of Vertigo, and the Burning Sands of the Phosphorus Desert, and that's just for starters! No wonder most of humanity seems to have died out.

Evil Is Not a Toy: Fully aware of this but driven to grave desperation - with his allies beaten and more and more of third earth falling to the thundercats - a powerless Mumm-ra stands ready to invoke the four lords of all evil, wondering if they will answer his pleas or make him wish he were dead.

For the Evulz: Mumm-Ra could just ignore the Thundercats and wait for them all to die (since he's, y'know, immortal), but where's the fun in that? This trope does still apply with him, but leaving the Thundercats alone, in his viewpoint, does let them build up. His immortality doesn't help him all that much when he has at least 2 weaknesses, so this wouldn't be wise if he plans to oppose them. Better to deal with them when they're still vulnerable.

Forgot About His Powers: A number of episodes would have ended early if Lion-O had remembered that he could call his sword to his hand.

Mumm-Ra seemed oddly helpless in the Book of Omens despite having more than enough abilities to retaliate or escape.

The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: From the safety of his home, Lion-o uses his sword's sight beyond sight to find out about Mumm-ra's latest scheme, only to see the villain speak right at him and address his spying attempts with mockery and accuse him of cowardice. An indignant Lion-o storms the black pyramid, falling right into a trap and providing the last piece Mumm-ra needed to complete his plan - the sword itself.

Gender Bender: Several of Mumm-Ra's plots involved him transforming into a female of some form to trap or trick the Thundercats.

Idiot Ball: Apparently being in cryogenic stasis not only gives you outrageous muscles and martial prowess, it also makes you retarded. Lion-O is basically a ten-year-old (or however old he was before stasis) in a buff adult body. If there was an Idiot Manchild trope, he'd qualify.

Averted when Mumm-Ra tried to make Lion-O and Hachiman the samurai batlle each other. Altough the heroes were willing to fight, their swords refused to battle.

Light Is Good / Dark Is Evil: The evil Mumm-Ra is in a dark, dreary pyramid and everything is shades of black or dark blue. The good Mumm-Rana is in a bright pyramid where everything is white and golden.

The Load: Snarf and occasionally Snarfer. Sometimes the locals of Third Earth as well if they're tagging along.

Master of Disguise / Master of Illusion: Mumm-Ra. A great many plots revolved around him disguising himself as an innocent or ally to sabotage the Thundercats. In one episode it's revealed that Tygra's also a master of illusion, not just invisibility. It puts a severe strain on him, though, and takes tremendous concentration and meditation to do (which also provides the necessary handwave as to why he had never used it before  he was saving it up for Lion-O's Anointment Trials.)

Mirror Match :In "Fond Memories", Mumm-Ra merges himself with a statue of Lion-O to match his physical appearance, abilities and weapons before dueling against him.

Motive Decay: Mumm-Ra's overall goal is supposed to be to steal the Sword of Omens, yet in some episodes he has the chance to take without any resistance from Lion-O and either flat out ignores it out or tries to get rid of it rather than taking it.

One time when Snarf was injured some distance away, Lion-O drew the Sword of Omens and kept saying "Thunder" (No, it's not going where you are thinking) until it was about 15 feet long, then it took off like a rocket with Lion-O hanging on to the handle. To add to it, when he got there, Lion-O used never before seen strength to lift rubble off of Snarf.

Never Say "Die": As per the usual, but Wilykit's cry of "He... isn't alive!" is the apex of this.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The reason that Thundera blew up in the first place is because in the past, Jaga threw the evil Sword of Plundar into the planet's core in order to destroy it and keep it from ever being used for evil. The evil energies apparently caused the seismic catastrophe.

In "The Last Day", the Ancient Spirits of Evil give Mumm-Ra one last chance to defeat the Thundercats. He naturally fails and is banished forever - until the very next episode. As they're about to leave Third Earth for New Thundera, the Thundercats level the black pyramid. The Ancient Spirits of Evil were not happy, so Mumm-Ra was freed and sent to New Thundera to fight the Thundercats again.

When Lynxo and Cheetara broke into the pyramid, the Ancient Spirits of Evil attacked them. And in "The Heritage" when a treacherous Mummra started the transformation chant, they flat out cut him off and refused. So it may have been a writing inconsistency (not unusual) or the usual Snarf Character Shilling. Of course if a worthy evil being somehow reached the inner sanctum, he may convince the Evil Spirits that he would make a better servant than Mummra and take the power for himself.

Pet the Dog: Mumm-Ra, of all people. Not only is Ma-Mutt his pet, but Mumm-Ra actually shows it affection.

Surprisingly, the Ancient Spirits of Evil get a moment. When Mumm-Ra is abandoned on Thundera (the Thundercats haven taken his Mumm-Raft in order to get back to Third Earth) and only able to communicate with Ma-Mutt via the cauldron, the ASOE are the ones who return him to the pyramid.

Ridiculously Difficult Route: The five-part episode "Lion-O's Anointment", has Lion-O tested by his teammates as a Coming of Age ceremony that every Lord of the Thundercats must go through to earn the title. In the second one, he actually has to race Cheetarah. As impossible as that seems, Lion-O is allowed to take an alternate route (which makes winning possible, given that Cheetarah can't run at full speed for as long as he can) but there's one catch - it's far more dangerous than the route she takes. After avoiding a Man-Eating Plant, a two-headed monster, and dwarf-like savages, he's able to win.

Save the Villain: In the episode "Key to Thundera", Mumm-Ra gets trapped in the Book of Omens and repeatedly blasted by fire. Unwilling to let him roast for all eternity, Lion-O goes in and rescues him.

Speak In Unison: Used in a creepy way. While chanting to send Lion-O to the astral world to rescue Jaga; the Nether-witch's voice starts to overlap with another. (Mummra revealing yet another of his many disguises and the consequences of Lion-O's decision).

Theme Music Power-Up: Despite the theme music playing at various dangery intervals, it would never be completed. It would go for a verse at most  or more often just a single line  then switch to some other background music.

One notable incident had to do with Mumm-Ra getting an Orb which quadrupled his power. The Ancient Spirits of Evil felt threatened by it with the prospect of being replaced, so they closed the pyramid to him. They couldn't do this after he finally killed off the Thundercats?

In another, The Ancient Spirits of Evil gave him 24 hours to finally kill the Thundercats, so he decided to do just that. Just as he was about to finish Lion-O off, they declared his time was up and whisked him away for punishment. If they had waited a few more seconds, Mumm-Ra would have actually won.

Villainous Rescue: Granted, he had selfish reasons for doing so (he was worried that he would be replaced as the chief servant to the Ancient Spirits of Evil), but if Mumm-Ra hadn't interfered with the Shadow Master's assault on the Thundercats, the latter would have successfully destroyed them.

Whip It Good: Tygra uses a bolo-whip, but when he uses it correctly, he can turn invisible.

Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In pursuit of the Lunatacs lair; Lion-O is about to call upon his friends when he hears a plea for help and finds a diminutive - unknown to him yet - Luna who's "losing consciousness". He lays down his sword to assist her, only to be grabbed by her hulking brute of a steed and have the daylights crushed out of him.

You Did Everything You Could: In "Return to Thundera", Lion-O wanted his father to leave Thundera quickly (it's unclear if ever made it at the time). But Panthero told him there was nothing he could have done. "No one can change history. We can only learn from it."

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